A beautiful fall day, and the smell of burning coal was in the air....

[Big_Boy_4005]

The leaves are changing colors, and Milwaukee Road 261 was back in action with excursions down CP's River Sub, following the Mississippi from St Paul to Winona.

As much fun as it is to ride, you get much better photos when you chase.

This year there weren't nearly as many people out chasing as there were in July 2004. This coupled wtih the fact that Big Girl and I had run the line before made for a much more pleasant experience. Oh yeah, and it wasn't raining.

Of course this time 261 was running solo instead of double heading with CP's Empress. This too played a part in keeping the crowds down.



Just about 10 AM the CP dispatcher got on the radio, and told the crew that there is a crowd of people waiting at Hastings. I swear they made an extra effort to put on a good show, with a huge plume of smoke and steam.



After leaving Hasitngs, the chase was on, except I screwed up. I thought we had gotten ahead of it, when we saw someone standing trackside with a camera and tripod. We drove ahead and found a good spot and waited.

Oops. [B)][:I]

It wasn't a total loss, because there was a freight train which we had seen earlier back in Hastings, sitting on the siding. A few minutes later the Empire Builder blew past.




At that point I knew we weren't going to catch before it got to Winona, so we took our time and stopped in Red Wing. I ended up taking a lot of photos in Red Wing for a couple of reasons. First, I am doing a representation of Red Wing on my model railroad, and second there were a couple of interesting freight trains that came through while we wire looking around.

As it turned out we never got all the way down to Winona. We stopped at this little grade crossing that we had discovered last year, and waited for the return trip.

We waited and we waited, finally the train showed up. I have one complaint about my digital camera, and that is recycle time. You have no idea how fast a train is coming when you are looking through the viewfinder. You just want to keep pushing that button as many times as you can. I didn't think the results were worth posting. Frustrating to say the least.

At this point the chase was back on. We easily caught up with it, and jumped ahead, then pulled off on the shoulder. The next two shots turned out pretty good.





There was time for one more location. The spot where we waited so long, was a quarter mile from a detector. We had just gotten back in the car, when I heard the report of 2 defects out of 74 axels. Never heard a defect report before, kind of cool. The crew radioed in that they would stop and grease the bad journals at the next siding. This meant we had a little extra time to get ahead and scout out a spot.



I think I finally got it right.

In spite of all the minor mishaps, I wouldn't trade today for anything. It was a beautiful fall day.[^][8D]

[Anonymous]

I remember that week when I chased the 261 with my engineer friend Jeff.

It was pretty cool that week to hear the distant wail of a steam locomotive at night, and in the day. The WC used the 261 to do some mainline freight service during that week as a stunt. About one a day, you could see the 261 pulling a good 45 car train over to Lomira to unload some paper cars at Quad Graphics. As It would go on the mainline (which is still 2 blocks away) It would sound the crossing signal, how magical it was to hear a steam engine. I imagined how it was like 60 years ago.

While we chased, my parents, and my brother and sisters went to then the Wisconsin Central terminal, to greet the 261 as it came in for more coal and water.

Luckly, they took pics.





I remember after the 261 did its loop around stevens point and came to FDL to refuel, Jeff got permision to take me in the cab. [^] I had neaver been in a fired steam locomotive's cab before, and man, it was hot. I even got to throw a load of coal in (even though the 261 has a auto-stoker) , and I got to see a yellow-wite fire burning in the firebox. It seemed to be so big then, probably if I took a look at the whole 261 now, it would seem small. But then again, it is a larger locomotive.

[tmcc man]

Great pictures. I especially like the last one, but they are all pretty good.

[spankybird]

Elliot,

Great pics, thanks for sharing them.

Check if your camera has a ‘Sport’ setting. One some cameras this will allow 3 pics in a roll. The only thing is you will have to look over the top of the viewfinder as it goes dark during the shooting. On other cameras, it only takes one pic but at a much faster shutter speed.

tom

[ChiefEagles]

Thanks Elliot. Great shots.

[92hatchattack]

WOW! great pics!!! Id love to get out and take my son to see a live steamer when hes old enough!!!

[wrmcclellan]

Elliot - great shots and nice writeup. Thanks! Roy

[laz 57]

Great job ELLIOT, nice I wish I was ther.
laz57

[Anonymous]

Fantastic pictures, Elliot! I wish I could have been there!

[Big_Boy_4005]

Thanks guys, it's my pleasure, as always, sharing my railfanning adventures with you. I often need reminding how lucky I am, especially in this case, to have such an active steam engine running around in my own "back yard".

I almost didn't go yesterday, but for the persistance of Big Girl. She really does keep me going, and puts me back on the track when I get derailed. Add to that all of the positive comments from all of you here, and it makes it extra special. I really wish you could all be here to experience it yourselves.

I must say that it is a little different when you're out there trying to capture images of something moving at 50+ MPH. It's like your attention focuses on nothing but what is in the viewfinder. The sound and the vibration just about disappear, and the experience becomes something of a blurr.

You see it coming a quarter mile away. Click, click, click, click, and your head snaps around for one final click as you turn to see that Skytop observation flying away down the rails.

I took 183 pictures Saturday. Of those, only 40 had any evidence of 261 in them. Lots of diesel action during the lulls.

---

Jerry, I've been in tha cabs of steam engines a number of times, but never while they were under fire. I can only imagine how hot it was in there. Looking at the date on those photos, that was almost half a lifetime ago for you.

Tom, I'm not sure if the sport setting on my camera speeds up recycle time. If it does, it may sacrifice image quality to perform the faster writes. I have been considering getting a digital SLR, maybe something like the Cannon Rebel like Bergie and Mike use for their trackside photo series. The technlogy is still improving. With use of buffering, recycle speeds are approaching those of film cameras, multiple frames per second.

Just for fun, for about the same amount of money one could buy a nice digital SLR setup, or Weaver's model of 261 with TMCC. Of course this would only be a dilema if one had $1100 to spare.[swg]

[spankybird]

I do know what you mean about sutter speed. The day I took pics at the air show, I was like you, alot more of blue sky than plans. I did get pertty good by the end of the day.

[daan]

Great pictures everyone! It is indeed a tricky thing to capture fast moving objects with a camera.